The Syrian
Graphic Artist Yaser Al Safi:
When The Hand is Set Free on The Canvas.

Muhammad Al-Ameri 2005

The Syrian artist Yaser Al-Safi is confidently moving forward his artistic
exceedings based on earnest researches within two contradictory areas: the area
of engraving and its laws, and the vast area of painting conjoined with ecstasy
and the act of flying over the canvas surface.

Through his visual inventions Safi remains an earnest artist who surpasses many
generations preceding him. Thus, we realize that the fineness of artistic work
and its advancement are not related to age, but rather to the genius of the
artist and how earnestly he deals with his talent and its revelations. Yaser Al-Safi
is one of those artists who took their work very seriously. This is noticeable
from the obvious presence of his personal experience displayed on the walls of
his exhibition. In his exhibitions he shows the mood of engraving side by side
the mood of painting in a very powerful, yet beautiful, way. His works reflect
his true artistic mood, whether through the painted palette or through the acid
engravings. Between these two areas there is a common space for clever
participation related to elements and methods of form which depend on liberation
from decorating the scene with ornamentalism, in order to go straight to its
expressive essence based on flying and floating creatures, orbiting both the
surface of the canvas and the engraved text. The human element coexists with
animals and mythological creatures, as if the artist were attempting to study
the lines of those figures as a mere visual matter in which lines intersect and
meanings differ. It is as if a child tries to make his own toys and dream
puppets which take him to a mysterious joy of a certain childhood, the childhood
of the immaculate eye and its dialogue with the visible and the imaginary.

The human being presents the movement that leads to lines governed by balances
of the surface. For example, we see the head functions as a thought-of weight
that keeps the balance of the figure's delicacy and its fragility. Ultimately
the figure is but an unlimited space of generated lines, as if we were before a
weaver making our way through the threads of his textile. All that leads us to
plentiful and various tones, each having its transformations whether painted or
engraved. What is really amazing about his engravings is that Al-Safi has
reached the stage of direct scratching over the surface of the metal, i.e.
dealing with zinc. As if a sketch paper or a canvas, he is able to control the
result through experience, fearlessness and the venturing of taking engraving
out of a well-organized area and into an area of flying.

We grasp the sophisticated exercises he made in search of significant
justifications for his high sense of economy of colors, coherence of lines and
their positive transformations in every space of the canvas.

He is a player who masters his instruments of expression wandering in the memory
of the artist to become a virtual truth both in his engravings and paintings.
Yaser is an artist inclined to his inner voice, liberating himself from the
censorship of what was achieved previously, to directly enter his own room and
pronounce his word with neither trepidation nor hesitation.